The Underground Railroad in Connecticut

2. Thorny Is the Pathway

N BOSTON, on the first day of the year 1831, that same abolitionist issued a forthright call to action in the antislavery cause. His namewasWilliam Lloyd Garrison; and in the initial number of his newspaper The Liberator he stated his position in words that no man could fail to understand :* I am aware, that many object to the severity of my language ; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen;—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. I am in earnest—I will not equivocate—I will not excuse—I will not retreat a single inch—and I WILL BE HEARD! Garrison wasas good as his word. For three decades, in the face of opposition at first nearly overwhelmingand always formidable, he led the fight for emancipation—not partial, not gradual, not linked to such disguised forms of discrimination as colonization, but immediate, uncondiCHAPTER 2 THORNY IS THE PATHWAY I 26 The Underground Railroad inConnecticut tional, and complete. The band of reformers who gathered about his standard were idealists all, stirred by the same zeal for human betterment that inspired the contemporary movements for temperance and for universal popular education . Among themselves, abolitionists might—and sometimes did—differ over strategy and tactics, but never over the ultimate goal. To these standard-bearers, with their crusading spirit and selfless deeds, the Underground Railroad owed more of its organization and effectiveness than to any other group. An early result of Garrison's challenge was the formation of the NewEngland Anti-Slavery Society, established at Boston in 1832. Within a year it had become the American Anti-Slavery Society and had spread over the North, carrying Garrison's principles wherever it went. Its purpose was dual: "To endeavor, by all means sanctioned by law, to effect the abolition of slavery; and to improve the character and condition of the free people of color." Its program included the following points: 1. To organize in every city, town, and village. 2. To send forth agents to preach the gospel. 3. To circularize antislaverytracts and periodicals. 4. To encourage the employment of free laborers,rather than of slaves, by giving market preference to their products.2 A fifth purpose, not explicitly stated but evident in the acts of many Society members,was to encourage and assist the escape of fugitives from slavery—the passengers of the Underground Railroad. Among the earliest antislavery societies in New England was that of New Haven, established in 1833. Two of its leading spirits were clergymen, the Reverend Samuel J. May of Brooklyn, Connecticut, and the Reverend Sim- THORNY IS THE PATHWAY eon S. Jocelyn. Their reasons for enlisting in the cause of immediate, complete emancipation were well phrased by May: Often it was roughly demanded of us Abolitionists "Why we espoused so zealously the cause of the enslaved? Why we meddled so with the civil and domestic institutions of the Southern States?" Our first answer always was, in the memorable words of old Terence, "Because we are men, and therefore, cannot be indifferent to anything that concerns humanity!" Liberty cannot be enjoyed nor long preserved at the North, if slavery be tolerated at the South.3 In the South, indeed, slavery was not merely tolerated; it wasencouraged and was growing apace. The cotton gin, invented as far back as 1793, was by now in widespread use; and with it, cotton production became increasingly profitable, so that more and more land was brought under cultivation and more and more slaves were demanded to work it. Moreover, the trans-Appalachian region of Alabama and the Mississippi Delta had become safe for fullscale settlement and exploitation only comparatively recently , with Andrew Jackson's victory over the Creeks in 1814. After that came a rush of settlers to the newly opened areas—hard-driving men, intent on carving a cotton empire out of the forests and canebrakes, and more than willing to burn up any amount of slave labor in the process. Where once the buckskin...